Jim Flaherty instrumental in launching big Durham projects

UOIT, Abilities Centre among his legacies

Durham College helps Ontario productivity

Jason Liebregts / Metroland

WHITBY -- Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, centre, announced a partnership between Durham College and 16 businesses October 3. The college will help through activities such as applied research with these companies to develop new and innovative products. With Flaherty were, left, Tom Polanic from ODG, as he explained innovations in their amphibious all-terrain vehicle, and Durham Collage president Don Lovisa. October 3, 2011

DURHAM -- Among the legacies Jim Flaherty leaves behind are the major projects he helped make a reality in Durham.

Mr. Flaherty and his wife Christine Elliott had a passion for helping people with disabilities, inspired in part by one of their triplet sons John, who has a developmental disability after suffering brain damage as a baby.

The couple was instrumental in taking the Abilities Centre in Whitby from an idea to a bustling 125,000-square-foot hub of activity.

“We feel a great affinity with Jim, because this is his baby,” says Leo Plue, executive director at the Abilities Centre. “This was his idea. He wanted a place where everybody could come together regardless of ability.”

Mr. Plue says Mr. Flaherty was part of process from the first planning meeting 15 years ago right through to the grand opening in June 2012.

Its members include a broad mix of people of all ages, with and without disabilities.

“This will be his legacy,” Mr. Plue says. “He loved coming here and seeing people of a variety of abilities all participating. He loved talking to the members ... when he came here he wasn’t Minister Flaherty. He would tell people, call me Jim.”

Mr. Flaherty will also be remembered in Durham for the role he played in bringing a university to the region.

UOIT’s founding president says the university would never have been built if it wasn’t for Mr. Flaherty’s assistance as a cabinet minister in the Ontario Progressive Conservative government when UOIT was established in 2002.

“People are always very kind to attribute the university to my own efforts, but the truth is it would never have happened without Jim Flaherty because I needed a cabinet partner and he was it,” says Gary Polonsky. “The overwhelming majority of the people in his caucus did not want UOIT to happen because they wanted it in their own community.”

He points out that a new university had not been created in Ontario for 40 years and many people questioned why it should be in Oshawa and Durham Region.

“He took a lot of heat inside cabinet for sticking to his guns on this but he prevailed and UOIT happened and it’s 10,000 students strong and it’s going to keep growing meteorically, but it could never have happened without Jim.”

The university’s current president, Tim McTiernan, echoed those comments.

“Jim helped fulfil the vision and dream for a new university in the eastern Greater Toronto Area and his legacy is deeply entrenched in the success of the university since its creation,” he said.

Mr. Flaherty also threw his support behind efforts to build a new home for the Humane Society of Durham Region after a tragic fire in December 2008 destroyed the building on Waterloo Street in Oshawa and took the lives of many animals.